Amazing New York: How Urban Infrastructure Helps Jews Observe Shabbat

Eruv is a symbolic fence that allows Shabbat-observing Jews to engage in common activities that are prohibited on that day. There are eruvins (plural of eruv) in more than 30 states in the United States, but Manhattan is one of the longest in the world. The publication told about him Atlas Obscura.

A nearly invisible wire runs from 126th Street in Harlem to Battery Park, and then turns to 111th Street along the East River. This fence has been around in one form or another for a little over a century.

With the onset of dusk on Friday until the sun sets on Saturday, Jews are prohibited from doing many things, including household activities. The conditions for compliance with this law are periodically updated to suit modern life, in which driving cars, the use of electricity and keys have appeared. "Transferring something from one ownership to another" or moving objects between public and private areas, for example, are prohibited.

The Eruvins transcend this limitation by serving as a symbolic boundary that ties together many private spaces into one community. This allows people to move objects, children, canes, baby strollers and wheelchairs within this space without violating Shabbat rules.

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The term "eruv" comes from the Hebrew word for "mixture." And for the Manhattan fencing, it's a fitting name: the line that encircles most of the island is a kind of patchwork, formed by various parts and inserts due to numerous wire repairs.

Only in the late 1990s did a structured service system for this eruv emerge. An early version of it covered the entire island, but it turned out that no one knew its exact boundaries, and everyone just assumed that someone else was responsible for repairing it. When a group of rabbis circled Manhattan in the 1980s to create a map of the eruv in the XNUMXs, they saw that most of the wire was gone.

His service is now more heavily regulated and paid for by the community he brings together.

For six days a week, and for Manhattan residents outside the community, an eruv is a simple, discreet set of wires. But during the holy Shabbat, it becomes essential for those who rely on this border to symbolically expand their territory while remaining true to their belief system.